Related link: http://www.sdforum.org/SDForum/Templates/CalendarEvent.aspx?CID=1318&mo=2&yr=200…

SDForum’s Web Services SIG is having an RSS night. On Tuesday (Feb 24) in Mountain View, they’ll be hosting three talks. Chris Pirillo will talk about how RSS enables the next generation of personalized marketing, Thomas Gieselmann will talk about how business models change as web content drifts to a syndication/subscription model, and Kevin Burton will do the deep-geek thing and actually talk about coding to various specs.

If you’re in the neighborhood, stop on by.

Would you go to an RSS-related SIG?

Related link: http://www.scripting.com/

I absolutely love this, from today’s Scripting News

Nader’s run separates the people who “get” American democracy, and those who don’t. If Nader is going to win the election for Dubya, then now’s the time to fix the bug in the process. Kerry isn’t nominated yet. Think. What’s the problem that Nader exploits?

The presidential election process in the US is so screwed up at this point, and it’s descended so far down into its own echo chamber of idiocy, that I’m baffled as to the solution.

With respect to the Democratic nominee: approximately 1/3 of the states, representing well under 1/3 of the population, have expressed a preference. Why did Howard Dean drop out? Well, a significant part of the reason was that all the coverage was about how his candidacy had been soundly rejected by the voters and he was no longer a factor.

Was he rejected? Well, the vast majority of the voters didn’t get the chance to do so.

Right now John Kerry, wearing the mantle of media-designated victor, is attacking Bush and attempting to appear Presidential. And the press coverage is mostly about how, if Edwards doesn’t win in the next few states, Kerry will be inevitable. Got that, Democratic party members in the last half of the states? Your opinions, hopes, and choices are irrelevant.

And now that Nader’s announced he’s in, we’re already hearing about how he’s just going to hurt the Democratic candidate. I find it both amazing and unsurprising that the number one response to Nader’s entry is not about his ideas and whether they’re any good. It’s about how his entry impacts the (mostly imaginary) horse race.

And I think there’s something astonishingly undemocratic about websites like Ralph Don’t Run.
The logic behind the ad is simple, and goes something like this:

1. If Ralph Nader runs, a significant number of people will vote for him.
   
2. The Nader voters would otherwise vote for the Democratic candidate.
   
3. The only way to prevent the Nader voters from voting for Ralph is to take away that choice completely.
   
4. Therefore, Ralph shouldn’t run.
   

Or, to rephrase it: Those damn voters! Why won’t they shut up and vote the way we want them to.

Would you vote for a “third party” candidate?

Related link: http://www.javalobby.com/nl/archive/jlnews_20040217o.html

I am not usually a big advocate of ‘link only’ blogs (particularly between article/blog based sites) but this article piqued my interest enough to want to get as many people as possible to read and understand another perspective on the whole ‘Sun, Java and Open Source’ debate that’s been rolling around for some time now.

The article covers the largely pragmatic (hey, we’re developers, this tends to be how we think!) approach to the discussion offered by Rick Ross, the editor of JavaLobby.

I can understand both perspectives on the issue but I have to be honest as a developer myself that Rick’s arguments really hit a chord with me. Whilst Eric Raymond’s open letter to Sun typified the ethical, social, and basically inherent patchiness of Sun’s approach to Java and open source; Rick’s article really raises the impact of the issue on concerns such as java job security and selling your java based products.

This is an important ongoing debate for the Java community as a whole and should therefore be of interest and closely followed by everyone that relies on Java for their wages, myself definitely included.

Your opinions on this are welcome on the JavaLobby page for the original article and here as well.

Related link: http://www.forbes.com/home_europe/newswire/2004/02/12/rtr1259615.html

In a recent speech, Michael Eisner, CEO of Disney, talked about Steve Jobs. From the article:

“He created the computer, or at least Windows, or whatever he created, and did a good job,” Eisner said to peals of laughter from analysts attending the company conference in Orlando, Florida.

I don’t quite get the hilarity, but it’s interesting. Either Eisner is deliberately putting down our industry, or he really doesn’t know what Steve Jobs has done.

In either case, kind of fascinating.

Does Eisner really think Jobs invented Windows?

Related link: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/12/technology/12CND-NET.html

The NY Times is reporting that the FCC is busy. “In one set of proceedings, the commission began writing regulations to enable computer users to gain access to the Internet through electric power lines.”

I know absolutely nothing about this. Can power lines actually support high-speed connections? If not, why is this better than using a phone? Or a satellite linkup? Can this be done securely and without interference from my neighbors? Anyone got any pointers to the technology?

And so on. Stephen Uhler (of Experimental Stuff) once made an offhand comment about sending very low bandwidth signals to and from devices in a house using the wiring. But my impression was that internet-scale communication through the power grid was infeasible.

Got info? Share urls.

Related link: http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/

There are very few blogs I read regularly (life being short and alla that). Don Park’s blog is one of them.

He posted a note on firefox, I decided to check it out, and wow it feels good.

It’s as nice as any browser I’ve ever seen. And, deep in the back of my mind is a very real sense of relief: I won’t get hit by the IE vulnerability du jour (whatever it happens to be today).

What do you think? Good enough to switch?

It’s amazing to sit here in the Digital Democracy Teach-In, where Joe Trippi has just begun speaking, and listen to the chorus of keyboards recording, I suspect, every word he says. ETech is a well-blogged event, but I have to wonder if there is a greater ratio of bloggers to attendees at this particular session than any before it.

What a great thing for digital democracy!

Related link: http://jcp.org/aboutJava/communityprocess/review/jsr176/index.html

I’ve been poking at JDK 1.5 a little bit (noticing things like “hey: UUID’s are in java.util”) and I started wondering: how do I wrap my head around the entire set of changes?

Silly rabbit. JSR-176 talks about the changes in a fairly comprehensive way. And it’s open for public review.
I particularly like the way it divides the sets of changes into “Release Drivers,” “Group Drivers,” and “Targets of Opportunity.” Getting visibility into what’s important is very nice.

Of course, it’s incomplete at the class level. For example, PriorityQueue is new in 1.5, and neat. But it’s not mentioned in the JSR.

The only change I’m worrying about right now is JSR-133. That has a strange place in my brain: it’s obvious that the repairs to the threading and memory are needed, and it’s good that they’re being addressed. And yet, you know what? I kinda wish they hadn’t been so conscientious. I don’t want to think about it.

What’s your candidate for most important change in 1.5?

Related link: http://www.sdforum.org/sigs/emerging

So it all began on New Years’s day. Like many people of a certain age, I no longer do the insane stay-out-all-night-on-new-year’s-eve thing anymore. Instead, I do the casual get-together-on-new-year’s-day-for-a-bit thing. I went to two get togethers this year. And, at both of them, I somehow got involved in conversations about Embedded Linux.

Weird

I mean, yeah, with the exception of the beard and T-shirt, I look like a software guy. And, yeah, in the heart of Silicon Valley, casual conversations, even with strangers, often have a technical bent to them. But … still … this struck me as impressive. Nobody had ever come up to me and started talking about Embedded Linux before. Twice in one day?

The only rational response was to try and get someone to talk at The Emerging Technology SIG. Fortunately, Rick Lehrbaum (editor of LinuxDevices) was ready, willing, and able. On February 10, he’ll talk about the state of embedded linux. He’ll be talking for a little over an hour (plus questions) on where embedded linux is today, and where it’s going. If you’re at all interested in where Embedded Linux is headed, and how it’s going to get there, stop by and check it out.

What else should the Emerging Technology SIG be paying attention to?

Related link: http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dv_vstechart/ht…

I went to SDForum’s Windows SIG last night, to learn about Generics in C#. It was interesting and I recommend that anyone interested in generics download the whitepaper (in particular, as a Java guy, I was fascinated by how different the design decisions were).

Related link: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/03/opinion/03SULL.html?ex=1391144400&en=d24ab38de…

Every now and then, you run into people who believe that newspapers have a crucial role in society. It’s sort of a benevolent dictator theory, featuring investigative reporters, crusading editors, and getting the information out to the public. A not-so-hidden aspect of this belief is that newspapers are trustworthy, and have the public good at heart. That journalists are somehow slightly more noble-spirited and public minded than the rest of us. That journalism is a noble profession.

In fact, to some degree, I used to believe that.

The big casualty this political season has been any vestige of that belief as applied to large-scale reporting (I’m still willing to stipulate that local reporting might involve some impulse towards the public good). From Howard Raines to astrology, I have no faith in the New York Times’s editorial policies anymore.

Dean’s fabled scream, which was really nothing but which got treated as something enormous, lost me my faith in television and the more immediate forms of publishing (keep in mind: I’m not a big Dean fan. It’s just that there are reasons to be for Dean, and reasons to be against Dead. And the scream was neither).

That the same pundits who proclaimed Dean inevitable now proclaim Kerry inevitable, and proceed to speculate about Hillary-for-VP with about the same levels of (1) proof and (2) confidence, don’t blush and aren’t mocked from every op-ed in the land, makes me wonder about the gullibility of our reporters and editors in general.

And that Janet Jackson’s breast was a bigger story than almost everything else, including the ongoing tales of Saddam’s mendacity well, that’s just plain depressing (or substitute any number of other issues here. There’s lots of things more important than her breast. And if you want to focus on her breast, how about wondering why she’s apologizing for it, but not the guy. How did it become all her fault anyway?).

The big question, for me at least, is where do we go from here. Is it even possible to have a large-scale democracy in a land where the media are hopelessly inept?

If not, how do we fix it? Somehow, I don’t think blogs are the answer.

The big question, for me at least, is where do we go from here. Is it even possible to have a large-scale democracy in a land where the media are hopelessly inept?

Voting in Missouri makes me feel like I’ve stepped back in time to the 1960’s. The process works like this:

• Bring your paper election notice with you and give it to the person at the table
• They don’t check id. They do find your name in the paper book and put their initials by your name
• You get one of three punch cards, depending upon your party affiliation.
• You then go to a little booth, slide the punch card into a REALLY old “contraption”, and punch a hole by your candidate.

The holes don’t align. The card won’t really slide in all the way…I was thinking “I wish I had my camera so I could take a picture of this and post it on my weblog”.

Seriously, the holes on the card are misaligned with the little voting contraption booklet by at least 1/8″. Thankfully they have numbers, so I was able to inspect the card to see if I actually punched the right number.

The good news is that in the primary, you only have one hole to punch. With dozens of holes to punch in the general election this November, I don’t have a lot of confidence in this particular technology.

Can a high-tech voting solution save us?